


Weakest Link

by Ripki



Category: Flight 29 Down
Genre: Character Death, Drama, Gen, Survival of the Fittest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-16
Updated: 2006-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripki/pseuds/Ripki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They buried Eric on a sunny day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weakest Link

\----

They buried Eric on a sunny day. Clouds would have given much needed shade for the task, but rain would have hampered the digging, so they were satisfied, although not surprised. 9 out of 10, the days were sunshine and heat. They couldn’t say what weekday it was, since Mondays and Tuesdays had blurred together a long time ago. If their carved marks on a palm trunk were accurate, it was the 23rd day of their fifth month on the island. They marked the day with a little cross.

 

The ceremony was short. Nathan said a few words he remembered from his granny’s funeral. From ashes to ashes. Taylor and Melissa sobbed, others were quiet. Lex had disappeared earlier, refusing to come to their first funeral on the island. First, but not the last? Would there be other shabbily made crosses sticking from the ground? Their chosen place for burial ground was an ordinary patch of land, a few miles from the camp. No one had said it aloud, but it was chosen because there was nothing important around it. No fruit, no water, nothing they couldn’t get from somewhere else. 

 

Nobody felt like talking, but the need to say something was almost overwhelming. The tradition was to remember what Eric was like, to tell some comforting stories about the dead. But what could they say? That nobody had actually liked him when they boarded the plane to Palau, but that in spite of all the faults he had become a part of their little group since the crash. The black sheep of the family. The opportunist. The one who made you laugh at the same time he made you rage. The sloth. The one who had hold the hope of rescue longest, even to his own end. There was no need to tell what Eric was like; they knew. It was that knowledge that had driven them to make their decision, to held their first burial. 

 

Daley put the flowers they had gathered on the fresh mount of ground, just under Eric’s hat. They had stripped him bare before laying him in the grave, but nobody wanted the hat. A cloth you could make new, make your own, but the hat would forever be that hat. 

 

It was worn, the colour faded from the sun, but there was no blood on it. It had fallen from his head, the waves carrying it away from the scene of death. They found it later on the beach, and Jackson had picked it up without a word. The camp had been unnaturally silent since then. There was no bickering, no laughter, no whining. No voting. 

 

Their last vote had been silent, and it had consisted of only five of them. After another selfish incident to set a crazy plan into motion involving their only knife, they had known what was to be done. The dread and the rush of adrenalin in their veins! Later that night, they had gathered on the beach, away from the two who still slept in the camp. Are we really going to do this? Someone had said. But they had to. They couldn’t afford anymore stupid mistakes, thieving, laziness, questioning of the decisions of the majority. Not if they were going to survive. And their odds for surviving were a lot better without the weakest link. It was all math now. Seven is too much. Seven minus one is six. 

 

One by one they left the grave, returning to their daily tasks. Soon the day would feel like any other day on the island. Soon they would not notice the difference that the absence of one makes. They would soon accommodate themselves to their new diminished size.

 

But when would six become too many?


End file.
